


Perennial

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the same every year, on Watanuki's birthday. But she savors each moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perennial

It’s his birthday that she looks forward to the most. It’s the same every year – Doumeki is waiting for her at the train station and she smiles at him in greeting, fiddling with her hair, self-conscious, wondering if she’ll seem very different to Watanuki now that a year has passed and she’s a little older. She knows he will still be exactly the same. They walk together, first with her filling him in on her day to day activities since the last time they saw one another, and then they lapse into a comfortable kind of silence, one that accompanies many years of knowing one another and speaking with one another often, on the phone or with Doumeki’s occasional visits. 

It’s when they reach the shop, to the borderline between their world and Watanuki’s world, that she always hesitates. She understands the necessity of their yearly visits, and it isn’t as if she doesn’t look forward to it every year. She doesn’t want to waste a single moment, not ever. And yet, she always hesitates. And yet, she always steps through after glancing at Doumeki, because refusing to enter would be a slap to the face on every price Watanuki has had to pay in order for the three of them to meet together, once a year. 

And with each step she takes towards his side, she feels happier. She’s stopped giving gifts years ago – she thinks it feels strange not to give a gift, but she understands now that it is never a gift that he receives lightly, because even as she presents him with the wrapped gift he’s already calculating a way to exchange with her, to find himself a price to pay in order to receive what she gives. So she knows now – all that can be her gift is her company, if only for a day. And even that is something that Watanuki must pay for, one way or another. 

So she does not take this day for granted, and eats everything he makes with a relish, smiling whenever Watanuki starts snapping at Doumeki in a brief shadow of a distant time they used to have, the three of them together. She savors every single minute she gets to spend with the two of them, all three together. 

And when the day ends, she starts counting the days until she can see him again. Three hundred and sixty-five left until the next time. 

Just three hundred and sixty-five.


End file.
